


well if you want to know me, i'm a war

by swearwollf



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pining but not enough emotional intelligence to realize it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swearwollf/pseuds/swearwollf
Summary: Rhys's lunch plans get changed by his boss, then by a kidnapping, then by his boss again.
Relationships: Handsome Jack/Rhys (Borderlands)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 201





	well if you want to know me, i'm a war

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to my friends basia, ghost, and sasha for cheerleading as i attempted to wring this out of my head and onto the page. thanks especially to basia for the comma wrangling, any erroneous commas or other mistakes are my own
> 
> title is from Billie Holiday by Warpaint

“Jack, you have a meeting with Quality Assurance in 10,” Rhys says as he places a fresh coffee on Jack’s desk. Jack glances up from his report just long enough to catch the smile on Rhys’s face while he takes a slurp from the sugary, milky mess from the place he likes in the Hub. He can never remember what these things are called but that’s what he has Rhys, and Rhys always gets his order right.

“Are they gonna do anything but assure me everything Hyperion is making is quality? I just did a quarterly update with them,” he retorts, slurping his coffee again. It’s still pretty hot.

Rhys sighs and barely suppresses rolling his eyes. This kind of behavior would typically piss Jack off, but from Rhys it doesn’t really bother him. He likes annoying Rhys. “Did you not read the agenda? It’s attached on your calendar.”

“Pumpkin, you know I don’t look at that friggin’ thing. That’s what I pay you for.” Damn, this coffee is really good and he didn’t even ask for one. Rhys is definitely buttering him up for something.

“They want to discuss methods of maintaining quality while also balancing the new planned obsolescence model and their budget.” Rhys props a hip on Jack’s desk and Jack tries to not to obviously observe how snug this makes Rhys’s slacks look on his thighs. No need to scare off his only decent PA in years over a sexual harassment complaint. “Which means they want you to give them money so they can save you money. I’m sure they have a slideshow with a pie-chart and everything, you know how the people in QA are.”

“Yeah-huh,” Jack dismisses, eyes studiously back on his report. Something about slag outputs with the new eridium refinery methods. “And they aren’t taking this up to their division head why?”

“I assume it’s because you killed her a few weeks ago. I don’t think she’s actually been replaced yet. Kinda surprising, normally people would be on that position like rakks on a corpse,” Rhys muses, angling himself to cross one ankle over the other. God, his legs are long... “I know you like to be fashionably late, but you really are pushing it at this point. It takes 30 minutes to get to floor 169.”

Jack barks out a laugh, still not looking up from his report. “Ha! Nice. Yeah, I’m not going.”

Silence for a moment, then: “If you don’t go, I’m going to have to.”

_That_ catches Jack’s attention. He leans back in his throne of a chair, turning it to face Rhys, legs spread wide to take up as much space as they can. Power stance. Rhys’s eyes don’t leave his face, jaw looking a little stubborn, arms crossed across his body. A bit of color rises in his cheeks but whether that’s from anger or from something else, Jack couldn’t say.

“Is that a problem?”

Rhys stands, dropping his arms from their defensive position to hang at his sides. His hands are clenched. “Actually, yeah. I kinda had plans. Lunch plans.”

Hm, Jack doesn't think he likes that. He stares Rhys down. “Oh yeah? Lunch plans? With your little friends? Surely they’ll understand if you have to reschedule, they know who you work for.”

Rhys’s brow wrinkles in annoyance. “A date. I have a date.” And Jack _definitely_ doesn’t like that.

“And you’re gonna skiv off work to go on a _date_?” He doesn’t sound too invested, does he? Quick, say something mean. “Since when did you have enough of a life to date.”

Rhys sniffs derisively, putting on his patented you-hurt-my-feelings-but-I’m-pretending-you-didn’t sneer and taking a step back from the desk. “I met him in the Hub, picking up _your_ lunch. He’s taking me to that place on floor 367, with the trees? This is our second date, I like him, he’s funny.”

How the hell did Rhys already go on one date with this guy and Jack hadn’t heard about it? “I’m not going to the meeting, just cancel on the guy.”

Oh, Rhys looks well on his way to being angry now. “Jack-,” he starts, but Jack hurries to speak over him.

“Ah-tut-tut,” he interrupts. “I’m not going, I have other shit to do. Now get to the meeting. You’re already running late, kiddo.”

“I don’t deserve-” Rhys starts again. Jack cuts him off with a glare.

“Go do your job, princess. _Prince Charming_ can wait.”

The color in Rhys’s cheeks is definitely from anger now, his expression pinched as he glares at Jack for a long moment, too furious to even speak. But all at once he deflates, the fight going out of him. The look he gives Jack is disappointed but resigned, and something in Jack twists with discomfort. 

Jack smothers the feeling mercilessly, dismissing Rhys further by turning back to his monitor to resume reviewing the slag report from R&D. His eyes pick up the words one by one, but none of them stick in his head long enough to make sense of what they mean put together in a sentence. In his peripheral vision he’s watching Rhys, who spends a few moments staring a hole into the side ofJack’s head before sighing again and making his way back to his own desk. Rhys doesn’t do anything so dramatic as stomp or pout, but Jack has known him long enough to read the agitation in the line of his shoulders and his gait.

When Rhys leaves Jack tries to dredge up some sense of triumph, but he can’t seem to manage it. Instead, he just feels vaguely cold and uncomfortable. Instead of thinking about it he makes himself start the report over again.

He probably just had too much sugary coffee. That’s why he feels so weird. Definitely the coffee.

\---

Jack does manage to get through the report, and several more after as well. It takes longer than he would like, but after a few minutes of what is definitely not emotional discomfort, he’s back in the swing of things. It’s only when he reaches for his coffee and realizes there’s nothing but the cold, syrupy dregs remaining that he realizes how long Rhys has been gone.

Then he gets the call.

Speak of the devil, it’s Rhys. At this hour he’s probably checking in to nag Jack into eating something. Jack sends it to the secondary screen on his terminal and without looking at the display picks up on the second ring.

“Took you long enough, cupcake, surely those idiots in-”

“Jack,” Rhys chokes.

Jack turns his attention to his second screen in alarm and goes rigid at what he sees. Rhys’s ECHOeye is dilated so wide that Jack knows immediately its not online and his bionic arm is shredded above the elbow, leaving the remaining wires to dangle and spark in the open air. Whoever has Rhys must he holding what’s left of his arm up in front of him so he can speak to the ECHO in his palm. There are a set of legs standing behind Rhys and one hand fisted in his hair to keep his head upright. A bruise is already blooming into livid color around Rhys’s functional eye, leaving him to blink blearily at Jack’s projection.

On his desk, Jack’s hands clench so tightly his fingernails cut angry crescents into his palms. Careful to keep his expression neutral despite his boiling rage, he lets out a put-upon sigh. “Hey, kiddo. Looks like you’ve got yourself in a bit of a pickle, huh?”

Rhys smiles lopsidedly, cringing in pain when it pinches the bruise on his face. “I’ve had better days,” he replies lamely.

The hand gripped in Rhys’s hair shakes him viciously, causing Rhys to gasp in pain. The camera on his ECHO is high-resolution for the sake of Rhys’s own vanity but it’s not doing him any favors today, nor is it helping Jack. Seeing the tears of pain well unshed in the corners of his eyes is enough to stoke the latent flame of Jack’s rage higher. A high-pitched drone starts to fill his head at the sight and his vision starts going red around the edges. 

“Handsome Jack,” demands the person behind Rhys. “This should have been you. Come to floor 169, subsection 87-B. Come alone. Or we’ll do to your little boytoy here what you did to Amanda Boxley.”

Jack has no idea who that is. He sucks his teeth loudly, biting back his instinct to instigate this moron further. Little uprisings like this aren’t uncommon and are easily destroyed but… They have Rhys.

Who, of course, has to make his opinion known. 

“Jack, don’t do-” is all he gets out before the person holding him up throws Rhys roughly to the ground where he disappears from the view of the camera, then follows it up with a swift kick. “Ow, fuck,” Rhys wheezes in reply.

The shrieking drone of Jack’s temper rises to nearly skull-rattling intensity.

Jack sucks his teeth again, this time just to be obnoxious. “Yeah, alright,” he agrees, smiling with ugly menace. “I’ll see you in a few.”

It’s not a promise. It’s a threat.

\---

Jack takes the executive elevator to his destination, so he gets there in a matter of minutes. He doesn’t have a plan, but he _does_ have a gun holstered on his thigh and control of this whole damn station. As he approaches the suite, the amount of employees in the hallways grows less and less, and the closer to 87-B he gets the more scared they look, scattering like roaches when they see him.

He shoots one of them in the leg before she can lock herself into the nearby storage closet, a woman in an expensive pantsuit and sensible but still fashionable heels marking her as a middle-manager instead of one of the drones. Sure, he could have just unlocked it and had her cornered, but this saves time and, hey, he needed to let off a little steam.

“Stop screaming,” he demands casually as he turns her onto her back with the toe of his shoe. She stops screaming, but keeps making this annoying whimpering noise while she stares up at him with huge, frightened-animal eyes. “Where’s Rhys?”

“Mr. Jack, sir, please, I didn’t know what he was p-planning until it was too late. I thought he was just going to- During the meeting, I thought he was just going to give you our- I didn’t know he would do this,” she blubbers. “Especially to Mr. Strongforke, he’s such a nice man. So e-easy to work with! He didn’t deserve-”

The woman cuts herself off with a scream when Jack grinds his heel into her bleeding thigh. “WHERE IS HE,” he roars over her shrieking. 

Whimpering, the woman points further down the hallway. “I think Mr. Williamson took him into his office. Please, sir, d-don’t kill me.”

God, does he want to. He wants to shoot her until her chest is nothing but red pulp. He wants the wring the life out of her with his own bare hands, feel her go slack as her animating energy leaves her.

But he needs to conserve his bullets and he doesn’t have time to waste killing her without them. He needs to find Rhys. He turns, pulling up a map of the subsection to locate this Mr. Williamson’s office, and leaves the woman to bleed alone in the hallway.

Once he has a name, it’s easy enough to find where he needs to go. He doesn’t encounter anyone else in the halls, probably scared off by all the screaming, so he has nothing to distract him from the rising red noise in his head as he pictures what could have happened to Rhys while Jack was making his way to him. It had been... disturbing to see his normally meticulous and fussy PA such a mess. Rhys must hate it.

Jack doesn't bother to knock when he reaches Williamson’s office. The door is locked, but the station knows Jack and the idiot either didn’t bother to or was too stupid to hack the local security system to keep Jack out. The door slides open with a quiet hiss and Jack strides through like he owns the place, because he does.

As soon as he passes the doorframe someone swings at his head with a gaudy and vaguely phallic desk ornament. Jack catches his assailant’s wrist, turning himself to slam their body into the wall beside the door with bruising force and use his spare hand to grab them by the throat before he realises who it is.

“Jack!” Rhys croaks through the grip Jack has on his airway. Jack lets his stranglehold go as though scalded, but angry red marks are already blooming in his wake. The paperweight or whatever the hell it was falls to the floor with a heavy thud and attempts to roll under the desk.

“Hey, princess,” he leers. He hadn’t stepped back when he realized it was Rhys he had against the wall so Jack is still very much in Rhys’s personal space. “Was that a dildo or are you just happy to see me?”

Rhys smiles at him with so much exasperated fondness that it shoots Jack with a shock of warmth blooming from his heart, like something vital had ruptured inside and now he’s bleeding out into his chest cavity. Rhys’s ECHOeye is still so dilated that the pupil overtakes the iris and his hair is messier than Jack has ever seen it, he’s bruised and exhausted and kinda fucked up, but he’s _alive_ and so painfully beautiful. Something in Jack uncoils in relief and it takes everything in him not to crush Rhys with a hug.

But Rhys moves for him, closing the negligible distance between them to press his lips softly to Jack’s, as though he’s afraid Jack will pull away. Jack doesn’t have full sensation through the mask, but he can feel the pressure of Rhys’s lips on his, the warmth of him. Rhys’s eyes are closed so Jack can stare all he wants without being caught, count the eyelashes that caress Rhys’s cheeks, the minute freckles that spangle his skin.

And yes, he had maybe thought about kissing Rhys before but he had never acted on it. Jack does have some self-restraint, and it’s a bad idea to fuck your PA, especially one as good as Rhys. So this isn’t something he let himself think he could have, more important to have a reliable assistant that he actually likes being around than a convenient fuckbuddy. 

But now that Rhys has given him a taste? Jack wants it _all_. Everything Rhys will give to him, and more.

His grip tightens on the wrist he forgot he was even holding still pinned to the wall as he crowds forward to feel more of Rhys, take more. Rhys’s eyes flutter open on a gasp that Jack greedily swallows like wine from his lips. He must like what he sees in Jack’s expression because he melts back into the kiss, going pliant under Jack’s aggression, closing his eyes again in surrender. Taking Rhys’s submission as his due, Jack uses his free hand to once again hold Rhys by the throat, gently this time, and use his thumb to guide Rhys’s jaw into a more advantageous angle.

He keeps his kisses soft, mindful of the bruises still developing on Rhys’s face, but gives no quarter in his slow, thorough campaign to conquer Rhys and kiss him breathless. Rhys’s wrist flexes in his grip but he doesn’t try to pull free, only kisses back with a quiet hunger that matches Jack’s own, until they both need a break to breathe.

“Damn, kitten.” Letting go of his wrist to put both hands on Rhys’s hips, Jack presses his forehead into the crook of Rhys’s shoulder and ghosts a kiss onto his collarbone. Rhys lets out a giddy laugh in reply, bright and lilting with happiness, tilting his head back to thud against the wall behind him. Jack wonders absently if Rhys is ticklish, if he can make Rhys laugh like that again.

“They’ll be back soon.” Rhys murmurs, still sounding a little breathless. “They went to grab coffee, I think they didn’t want me to hear them arguing? There’s only two of them now, everyone else left when Williamson stunned me during the meeting.”

“They went and got coffee during a kidnapping?!” 

“Yeah, well. I don’t think they thought you would get down here this quickly.” Rhys chuckles, and something about it sounds self-deprecating. Jack reads between the lines: Rhys hadn’t been sure how fast he would get here either. Maybe he hadn’t been sure Jack would come at all.

And, oh, does that rankle. Steps will have to be taken so that Rhys never doubts him again. Starting with murdering the people that kidnapped him. Thoroughly.

Looking Rhys in his remaining functional eye, Jack imbues his voice with all the gravity he can as the universe’s most powerful man. “Rhys, I’ll always come for you.” Then he ruins it by waggling his eyebrows suggestively afterwards.

But it’s worth it for the way Rhys smiles at him, shy but also almost proprietary, like he wants something Jack has but he isn’t sure it’s his for the taking. And like a brick to the head, Jack remembers all the other times he’s seen Rhys look at him the same exact way. Hell, just today he had done it while Jack was busy trying to arrange for his lunch date to be cancelled. 

How, Jack berates himself, could he be so friggin’ blind! He’d had Rhys making goo-goo eyes at him for months and not even noticed! He could have had Rhys all to himself all this time and he didn’t even _see it._

And of course his moment of revelation is interrupted by a noise in the hall, the sound of two people arguing loudly as they approach the door. God, this guy is at this level of management and doesn’t even have a sound-proofed office? No wonder he wanted to revolt.

Jack jerks Rhys behind him as the door slides open on the morons that would dare kidnap Handsome Jack’s PA.

“Oh shit. Wilson, he’s here already!” exclaims the guy in the doorway, dropping his coffee on his own foot in alarm. He yelps as the splash hits his shin, then stumbles into the doorframe like a complete clown. God, how had these bumbling idiots even managed to get the drop on Rhys. Jack is gonna have to teach Rhys some self-defense, maybe start some sparring. Maybe start some naked sparring.

“Wait,” Jack jeers, “is your name ‘ _Wilson Williamson_ ’? Holy shit, did your parents hate you or something?” 

Williamson, face white with horror, steps around his friend and pulls a pistol from the back of his pants like he thinks he’s some kind of holovid gangster. That high, angry droning starts in Jack’s head again at the sight, like his skull is a kicked hornet’s nest. He grins.

Leveling the gun at Jack, Williamson screeches, “This is for Amanda, you bastard!” And he pulls the trigger. The sound of a gunshot in the tiny office is almost enough to drown out the red hot screaming of Jack’s rage.

With a laugh, Jack spreads his arms wide as if in invitation for another bullet. “You forgot about shields, idiot!” he crows, then he’s lunging for Williamson with his teeth bared, the taste of violence already on his tongue.

Williamson shrieks in terror and drops the gun with fear-limp fingers as he turns to run. Jack is on him in an instant, slamming into him from behind and throwing him to the ground. Williamson tries to crawl away but Jack punches him in the back of the head hard enough his face hits the floor with the wet crunch of a nose breaking. While he’s dazed from the pain, Jack grapples him onto his back and throws his leg over his victim’s middle so he can’t get away.

Jack’s head is positively singing now, the drone becoming a chorus of something like voices only he can hear but still can’t understand even after all these years after that thing in the vault destroyed his face.

Williamson’s eyes roll wildly in his head as Jack chokes the life out of him, bulging and bloodshot from lack of oxygen. He struggles, trying to buck Jack loose but all his weight is on Williamson and he can’t gain any traction, can only kick uselessly at the air. He claws at Jack’s wrists until he draws blood, but Jack can’t even feel it, busy watching the light drain from Williamson’s eyes is slow increments. 

Grinning so wide it hurts, Jack leans in close for Williamson’s last moments, looking him right in the eye as he tells the dying man, “I don’t even know who Amanda is.”

And with one more pitiful gurgle, Williamson is gone.

A yell interrupts Jack savoring the comedown. He lets go of the lifeless body under him and whirls in time to see the other guy crumpled to the ground behind him. Rhys stands over him with that same phallic paperweight in hand, a new spot of blood shining wetly on the sharp corner of it’s base. The gun Williamson had dropped is still in his friend’s hand.

Rhys kicks the guy viciously in the ribs, shouting, “And that’s for frying my prosthetics!” He doesn’t even twitch. 

“I think you killed him, babe,” Jack laughs, rising to his feet and brushing his hands off on his pant legs. His head is quiet again but his wrists are starting to sting.

“Aw, crap,” Rhys replies, dropping his big gold murder-dick with a clang. He puts a hand to his head like he feels woozy.

Jack reaches out to steady him as he sways. “Woah, woah, woah. You okay there, Rhysie? Surely a little murder isn’t making you dizzy?”

“Shut up, I’ve had a terrible day and I haven’t even eaten since breakfast.” Rhys steps closer to Jack, leaning against him and hiding his face in Jack’s shoulder. He hooks his forefinger in Jack’s belt-loop and hangs on. “That guy was going to shoot you.”

Jack remembers all over again that this is his now, that he can have Rhys now. Rhys opened that door and now there’s no turning back. He strokes up Rhys’s spine, measuring the perfect arch of it with his hand. His.

“I know. You did good, Rhys.” Jack praises, face angled into Rhys’s hair. He can’t feel it through the mask but he wants to, wants to feel it on his bare face. He breathes in the smell of Rhys’s expensive shampoo. “Let’s just call it a day, huh? Head up to my penthouse, I’ll cook you something. It’s a little late for it but I owe you a lunch date now, don’t I?”

Rhys laughs into Jack’s shoulder, shaking more than what a laugh warranted. “What are you cooking?”

Pressing a kiss to Rhys’s head, Jack promises, “Anything you want.”


End file.
